Each week, I will be expanding upon my Lamar University EDLD 5364 Teaching with Technology discussion postings on this page. Follow my postings, post your own discussion topics and questions, and let's learn together!
Week 1 Discussion Elaboration
For those unable to access the Lamar EDLD 5364 Discussion Board, here is my post for Week 1: My quote is from How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: "Technologies do not guarantee effective learning... Inappropriate uses of technology can hinder learning—for example, if students spend most of their time picking fonts and colors for multimedia reports instead of planning, writing, and revising their ideas."
Technology in and of itself will not translate into effective learning, no matter how innovative the technology, or how broad the resource base. This quote illustrates the most important role of the teacher in the modern classroom; guiding students to pick the most effective technologies for the task at hand, and facilitating their access to the most appropriate resources available. Teaching ethics and the evaluation of resources is critical to assist students in the most effective use of technology, and to prepare them for lifelong learning. Teaching our students the appropriate technologies to use in various situations is our modern equivalent of apprenticeship; we are like master carpenters teaching our apprentices which [technology] tools to use and which resources and materials will result in the best [knowledge] product.
I believe that the time has past for teachers to stand live upon the stage reciting facts and figures for students to memorize and furiously scribble down, expounding their knowledge as if it were water to be soaked up by the "sponges" in their classroom. I also believe that the time has past for using technology in the classroom just for the sake of using technology, and calling it integration.
To become an effective teacher, we must now become a guide, showing our students the most effective and appropriate technology tools and resources to use as they synthesize knowledge. Rather than reciting dry facts, we must digitize our knowledge and make it available in various forms for discovery and integration by our students.
A great way to model appropriate use of technology while transforming teaching and learning is to deliver course content, including teacher lectures, through digital means. Masoud Ghaffari's Effective Use of Technology in the Classroom provides a well-researched perspective on the role of the modern educator who supports varied learning styles by providing lecture materials in digitized form. The approach described, and the data that validates this approach, not only demonstrate effective use of technology, but could well have served as a model for our online courses at Lamar.
Week 2 Discussion Elaboration
For those unable to access the Lamar EDLD 5364 Discussion Board, here is my post for Week 2: In building upon my quote from last week regarding the importance of the appropriate application of educational technology, John Schacter's The Impact of Education Technology on Student Achievement, has a telling evidentiary quote regarding negative findings from the National Study of Technology's Impact on Mathematics Achievement: "Both fourth- and eighth-grade students who used drill and practice technologies performed worse on NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress] than students who did not use drill and practice technology." This example provides further evidence that integrating technology for the sake of technology has no significant impact on student achievement, and can actually be a detriment. Years ago, we all saw the explosion of "drill and practice" applications, and many of us argued that most of it was just an evolution of flash cards providing a panacea of accomplishment through technology.
Now, for a specific technology strategy that positively impacts learning, differentiation through digital technology truly transforms the teaching and learning process. As David H. Rose & Anne Meyer state in Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning "Because of their inherent flexibility, digital technologies can adjust to learner differences, enabling teachers to (1) differentiate problems a student may have using particular kinds of learning media from more general learning problems and (2) draw upon a student's other strengths and interests that may be blocked by the exclusive use of printed text." This use of technology enhances learning by adding flexibility to the delivery of content, supporting a learner-centered environment by allowing students to acquire information by whatever means suits their unique learning style and overcomes any handicapping condition or limitation they may have. This is what we must aim for as we teach with technology; using the technology as an enabler to foster learning in ways that are impossible without the use of technology, and to provide a multifaceted approach to content delivery instead of the old traditional "one size fits all" lecture and printed work format.
There is more and more evidence that technology must be employed in a way that enhances student opportunities for learning, increases opportunities for access, provides differentiation in content delivery, and promotes higher-order thinking and 21st Century Skills. For too long, we have lumped students into categories and pulled them out of their classrooms to participate in Gifted and Talented programs, Special Education programs, and Accelerated programs simply because they learn differently than their peers. No more.
The ability to provide a unified instructional program to all our students through technology-based differentiated instruction, regardless of how fast or slow they read, their preferred instructional mode, or their base of knowledge is truly a revolution in education. We are finally on the threshold of providing such a rich diversity of primary and supplemental instructional resources to our learners that we can "unify through differentiation"; a single teacher can accommodate all their student's learning styles in a single setting, while still providing individualized instruction to each student.
Week 3 Discussion Elaboration
For those unable to access the Lamar EDLD 5364 Discussion Board, here is my post for Week 3: My quote is from Chapter 6 of Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: "Much of the art of teaching patterns lies in selecting and presenting numerous, effective examples. Digital media and tools can facilitate finding and presenting these examples in the form of text, image, sound, or video. Unlike a printed textbook, in which the examples are limited in number and selected by the publisher, the array of materials available in digital form (online and on multimedia disks) lets us build expansive collections of examples suited to our instructional needs and the needs of our students."
Learning to recognize patterns is a critical skill whether applied to patterns in speech, writing, or mathematics. The application of technology to the art of teaching patterns transforms teaching and learning in ways that are impossible with traditional textbooks. This wide variety of digital media and content support connectivism by allowing students to make new connections to increase existing knowledge, demonstrate their knowledge through online benchmark tests and exercises, and provide reinforcement and review through multiple online formats, accommodating a diverse range of learner knowledge and skills. Of all the learning theories we have studied, connectivism seems to be the theory that is tailor-made for today's digital-native, technological, Web 2.0 educational environment.
In this post, I delve further into the learning theory of connectivism, which builds upon my last post on differentiation through technology. Unlike the theory of constructivism, in which new knowledge is made meaningful to us as learners only by assimilating it into our base of existing knowledge, plugging it in like a Lego building block to incorporate it into what we already know, connectivism deals more with the importance of our connections to information and knowledge. It is this potential for knowledge, in which knowledge may exist externally to us (such as in an appliance or database) yet is available through the network of connections we form, which best models the world of today's "digital native" students. Unlike the days when we "digital immigrants" were in school, in which we memorized tables and formulas and had to posses the information in our head needed to work out complex math problems, our students today carry relatively little information with them internally, but know how to find all the information they need to construct new knowledge by using these information connections. Follow these Wikipedia links to compare and contrast the theory of connectivism versus constructivism.
Connectivism is also very relevant to our students today due to the inherent diversity in the available sources of information, and the community of opinions that are used to synthesize knowledge. Our current students have a much broader base of experiences and knowledge than we did at their age, leading to great diversity of learning styles and educational needs. Differentiation, the practice of providing multiple modes or channels of learning through which students can accomplish the same learning goal, is well supported by connectivism and the rich diversity of multimedia content available on the web. There are, so to speak, many paths to enlightenment.
An interesting blog by George Siemens about connectivism, and his definition of connectivism, really expands upon the notion that for today's students, it is all about currency of information. Why would you want to memorize a fact that will change tomorrow? Thanks to technology, the sum of mankind's knowledge is increasing at such a rate that the learning styles of the past, based on accumulating knowledge internally, are made obsolete. No one person could ever absorb a fraction of our current knowledge, so we must focus on teaching our students how to connect or network to new information and content, synthesize knowledge using this information as needed, and then use this newly-formed knowledge as a springboard to network to even more current information.
When we as educators are expected to prepare students for an unknown future, or a job that does not exist today, teaching them the learning skills required to synthesize new knowledge based on a connectivist approach is the only learning model that fully meets the needs of our diverse students in this ever-changing world.
Week4 Discussion Elaboration
For those unable to access the Lamar EDLD 5364 Discussion Board, here is my post for Week 4: My quote regarding a key concept to address when designing effective student-centered learning experiences with technology comes from Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age, Chapter 7, The Value of UDL in Assessment: "Embedded, flexible, ongoing assessments have the potential to resolve many of the problems with standardized, paper-and-pencil tests, particularly as tools for guiding teaching. It is true that standardized tests can yield valuable information, especially if one is evaluating trends and information about groups, but as accurate assessments of individual students' skills, knowledge, and learning, these assessment tools are severely flawed."
As we incorporate more and more technology into the curriculum, we must also ensure the continuum between the written, taught and tested curriculum is maintained. We are learning how to use multiple forms of media and materials to address the unique learning styles and learning networks of our students, and we must also put equal effort into reforming our assessment practices. It is critical we as leaders take an active role in transforming in-classroom assessment, mentoring our peers on the necessity of integrated, ongoing formative and summative assessments in a variety of styles and media so that we are truly assessing student knowledge of course materials and concepts. There are far too many examples of our assessments measuring test-taking skills; in my own district, it was once determined that poor performance on benchmarks at an elementary was caused by poor bubbling skills on Scantron forms. This is a prime example of a well-intentioned but inappropriate use of educational technology, applying it in a way that without proper instruction and accommodation will confound the measurement of student learning.
This topic is especially near and dear to my heart as a district administrator; with so much emphasis put on accountability and student performance, we must change the way students are being assessed so that we are truly gauging their knowledge of the subject matter and not their test taking skills (or lack thereof). However, there are still some that are concerned we are "coddling" our students by being too accommodating; they would argue that the workplace is not going to accommodate you, life is tough, and school must prepare students for the workplace by being more rigid and stringent, particularly in assessment.
I contend that just as we use accommodations in special education with the goal being to improve student learning skills to the point they can be exited from the program, and learn and function independently, our goal should be to teach and assess students in such a manner that we prepare them to become independent learners in whatever means suits their unique learning styles. In a typical job there is little "assessment" as such; other than completing assigned tasks, the boss almost never tells you how to perform a task; that is up to you. This is in contrast to most current classrooms, where we tell students how to learn and assess them all in the same manner just as we did in the industrial age when we needed more "drones" and fewer independent thinkers.
In our jobs, we are very goal and task oriented, and how well we perform our tasks is our assessment; we do not take a separate test at the end of each assignment. Classroom assessment must be more closely adapted to this real-world model. One method to accomplish this is by incorporating assessment into the performance of the learning tasks, such as building portfolios of student work, or libraries of appropriate links and social bookmarks in a wiki demonstrating understanding of a subject and the ability to network in new resources during their creation of knowledge. An added benefit of this approach is that it better meets the needs of students with various learning styles and diverse backgrounds as the students are being assessed in an ongoing format including multiple types of assessment such as demonstration of skills, dialoging, and presentation of work.
Harvard University has excellent web resources regarding the Teaching for Understanding Framework. Their web page answering the question What is Ongoing Assessment? contains some very relevant real-world examples of this process, examples based in the world of work as I alluded to above. Also refer to the Key Features of Ongoing Assessment for more guidance you can use as a foundation for rubrics including ongoing instruction in your classroom. I particularly like their Teaching with Ongoing Assessment page, which reminds us that assessment is not just performed to gauge student learning, but also as feedback to examine and reshape our curriculum and pedagogy.
Other great resources on changing classroom instruction and assessment to be more learner-centered can be found on the CAST (Center for Applied Special Technology) UDL (Universal Design for Learning) website, and of particular interest to the topic of ongoing, embedded assessment is their information on The Value of UDL in Assessment.
Ultimately, the biggest lesson I learned this week in my Teaching with Technology class is that we must always remember, as one of my fellow students posted on our discussion board, that assessment must be used to evaluate ourselves as teachers, and our teaching methods, just as much as it is used to evaluate student learning. By changing the way we assess our students so that we are truly assessing their knowledge and skills and not just their test-taking ability, we gain a better understanding of how to improve them and how to improve ourselves as well. We must remember that we are all learners, we must learn with our students, and we can build relationships by sharing with them the excitement of creating new knowledge that is self-assessing as the lessons progress.
Week5 Discussion Elaboration
For those unable to access the Lamar EDLD 5364 Discussion Board, here is my post for Week 5: My final quote is from Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools; "If educators work together to plan their instruction and simultaneously plan ways to evaluate throughout the unit, they will develop a wide variety of interesting models." This hit home because one of the less-appropriate uses of classroom technology has traditionally been the use of technology primarily as an "automated testing system" in which teachers reduce everything to "bubble sheets" and let the Scantron do the work. Even teachers who have spent lots of time designing differentiated instruction practices, and who are really concerned about reaching every student in the manner that suits their learning style, often see assessment as a separate component, somewhat out of their control, and very traditional and linear.
As technology leaders, we must work to change our teacher's views of what constitutes assessment; although there will always be state-required assessments that may be beyond our control, the day-to-day assessments and benchmarks must be planned and incorporated as a natural part of the learning process. We must get teams of teachers to design their assessment as an integral and ongoing process that presents a variety of formats, includes performance and evaluates effort, and helps the student make a clear link between the effort they have put into a project and the grade they receive. If we can get enough ongoing, integral assessment tied directly to the curriculum objectives and embedded natively into the teaching process, and if we quit thinking about assessment as a separate, ritualistic process, we will better prepare our students for a task-performance oriented world while at the same time preparing them with a foundation of the knowledge and skills they need to master our state assessments.
As an administrator, assessment is particularly important to me, as we need to make data-driven decisions, and the student performance data is ultimately only as good as the testing process used to gather that information. Give a student a test that accommodates their learning style, allows them to demonstrate their knowledge of content, and lets them connect their effort to the outcome, and you will get very accurate data on how well students are learning. Give students a Scantron, bubble-in only test with no options or accommodations and you will get data reflecting their bubbling skills and reading/comprehension abilities as much as it reflects knowledge of the subject matter.
For this reason, it is critical to build in ongoing assessment in a variety of formats ranging from self-assessment documents to portfolios of work, online surveys, observations of performance and brainstorming sessions. It is also critical that students receive regular and ongoing feedback from these varied forms of assessment all along the way so as to make connections between the effort they expend and their grade, and to know where they stand academically each step of the way allowing them to make intuitive mid-course corrections themselves without excessive intervention.
As one of my classmates observed in the discussion this week, you can really see from the expression on your student's faces whether they are frustrated or perplexed by the assessment tool, as they often appear to be when writing essays or research papers, or when they are at ease and understand their performance and the expectations of an assignment such as when working on wikis or blogs. The nature of an essay or research paper separates performance from evaluation, and provides few opportunities to determine whether the effort is producing the desired outcome; all we have really done is replace a typewriter with presentation or word processing software.
In order to address this issue in my District, we are transitioning to the use of wikis and blogs, and our English department is excited about using Google Docs, concentrating on building in regular feedback loops and progress points much as we have used in our Teaching with Technology class. It does take more involvement and follow-up from the teachers, but they are anxious to do whatever it takes to improve student performance by letting the students work in their native technologies. I do fear there will be some teachers who never fully grasp the need for this change, but we must do all we can to help our peers move forward, and in the end, make the difficult but sometimes necessary staffing decisions if they refuse to accept change and grow professionally. Student outcomes must drive everything we do, and we must be ready to make the hard decisions for the good of our students.
A great site for learning more about non-traditional assessments and educational technology, particularly in the area of Foreign Languages but applicable to all subjects, is the site of teacher Audrey N. Hannaford's Assessment Portfolio detailing various types of assessment. Ms. Hannaford also has great information on her Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium page.
As a fitting closing for this section of my wiki, I will borrow a great quote from Ms. Hannaford's main page that really sums up the purpose of our Teaching with Technology class, as well as the reason most of us are in the teaching profession to begin with:
"As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it."
Week 1 Discussion Elaboration
For those unable to access the Lamar EDLD 5364 Discussion Board, here is my post for Week 1:
My quote is from How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: "Technologies do not guarantee effective learning... Inappropriate uses of technology can hinder learning—for example, if students spend most of their time picking fonts and colors for multimedia reports instead of planning, writing, and revising their ideas."
Technology in and of itself will not translate into effective learning, no matter how innovative the technology, or how broad the resource base. This quote illustrates the most important role of the teacher in the modern classroom; guiding students to pick the most effective technologies for the task at hand, and facilitating their access to the most appropriate resources available. Teaching ethics and the evaluation of resources is critical to assist students in the most effective use of technology, and to prepare them for lifelong learning. Teaching our students the appropriate technologies to use in various situations is our modern equivalent of apprenticeship; we are like master carpenters teaching our apprentices which [technology] tools to use and which resources and materials will result in the best [knowledge] product.
I believe that the time has past for teachers to stand live upon the stage reciting facts and figures for students to memorize and furiously scribble down, expounding their knowledge as if it were water to be soaked up by the "sponges" in their classroom. I also believe that the time has past for using technology in the classroom just for the sake of using technology, and calling it integration.
To become an effective teacher, we must now become a guide, showing our students the most effective and appropriate technology tools and resources to use as they synthesize knowledge. Rather than reciting dry facts, we must digitize our knowledge and make it available in various forms for discovery and integration by our students.
A great way to model appropriate use of technology while transforming teaching and learning is to deliver course content, including teacher lectures, through digital means. Masoud Ghaffari's Effective Use of Technology in the Classroom provides a well-researched perspective on the role of the modern educator who supports varied learning styles by providing lecture materials in digitized form. The approach described, and the data that validates this approach, not only demonstrate effective use of technology, but could well have served as a model for our online courses at Lamar.
Week 2 Discussion Elaboration
For those unable to access the Lamar EDLD 5364 Discussion Board, here is my post for Week 2:
In building upon my quote from last week regarding the importance of the appropriate application of educational technology, John Schacter's The Impact of Education Technology on Student Achievement, has a telling evidentiary quote regarding negative findings from the National Study of Technology's Impact on Mathematics Achievement: "Both fourth- and eighth-grade students who used drill and practice technologies performed worse on NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress] than students who did not use drill and practice technology." This example provides further evidence that integrating technology for the sake of technology has no significant impact on student achievement, and can actually be a detriment. Years ago, we all saw the explosion of "drill and practice" applications, and many of us argued that most of it was just an evolution of flash cards providing a panacea of accomplishment through technology.
Now, for a specific technology strategy that positively impacts learning, differentiation through digital technology truly transforms the teaching and learning process. As David H. Rose & Anne Meyer state in Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning "Because of their inherent flexibility, digital technologies can adjust to learner differences, enabling teachers to (1) differentiate problems a student may have using particular kinds of learning media from more general learning problems and (2) draw upon a student's other strengths and interests that may be blocked by the exclusive use of printed text." This use of technology enhances learning by adding flexibility to the delivery of content, supporting a learner-centered environment by allowing students to acquire information by whatever means suits their unique learning style and overcomes any handicapping condition or limitation they may have. This is what we must aim for as we teach with technology; using the technology as an enabler to foster learning in ways that are impossible without the use of technology, and to provide a multifaceted approach to content delivery instead of the old traditional "one size fits all" lecture and printed work format.
There is more and more evidence that technology must be employed in a way that enhances student opportunities for learning, increases opportunities for access, provides differentiation in content delivery, and promotes higher-order thinking and 21st Century Skills. For too long, we have lumped students into categories and pulled them out of their classrooms to participate in Gifted and Talented programs, Special Education programs, and Accelerated programs simply because they learn differently than their peers. No more.
The ability to provide a unified instructional program to all our students through technology-based differentiated instruction, regardless of how fast or slow they read, their preferred instructional mode, or their base of knowledge is truly a revolution in education. We are finally on the threshold of providing such a rich diversity of primary and supplemental instructional resources to our learners that we can "unify through differentiation"; a single teacher can accommodate all their student's learning styles in a single setting, while still providing individualized instruction to each student.
A great resource for information on differentiation can be found at the Enhance Learning with Technology site; you will also find a great Links on Differentiation section providing strategies, resources, and summary information. Carol Ann Tomlinson's The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners is available on Google Books and is an excellent primer on differentiated instruction in general.
Week 3 Discussion Elaboration
For those unable to access the Lamar EDLD 5364 Discussion Board, here is my post for Week 3:
My quote is from Chapter 6 of Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: "Much of the art of teaching patterns lies in selecting and presenting numerous, effective examples. Digital media and tools can facilitate finding and presenting these examples in the form of text, image, sound, or video. Unlike a printed textbook, in which the examples are limited in number and selected by the publisher, the array of materials available in digital form (online and on multimedia disks) lets us build expansive collections of examples suited to our instructional needs and the needs of our students."
Learning to recognize patterns is a critical skill whether applied to patterns in speech, writing, or mathematics. The application of technology to the art of teaching patterns transforms teaching and learning in ways that are impossible with traditional textbooks. This wide variety of digital media and content support connectivism by allowing students to make new connections to increase existing knowledge, demonstrate their knowledge through online benchmark tests and exercises, and provide reinforcement and review through multiple online formats, accommodating a diverse range of learner knowledge and skills. Of all the learning theories we have studied, connectivism seems to be the theory that is tailor-made for today's digital-native, technological, Web 2.0 educational environment.
In this post, I delve further into the learning theory of connectivism, which builds upon my last post on differentiation through technology. Unlike the theory of constructivism, in which new knowledge is made meaningful to us as learners only by assimilating it into our base of existing knowledge, plugging it in like a Lego building block to incorporate it into what we already know, connectivism deals more with the importance of our connections to information and knowledge. It is this potential for knowledge, in which knowledge may exist externally to us (such as in an appliance or database) yet is available through the network of connections we form, which best models the world of today's "digital native" students. Unlike the days when we "digital immigrants" were in school, in which we memorized tables and formulas and had to posses the information in our head needed to work out complex math problems, our students today carry relatively little information with them internally, but know how to find all the information they need to construct new knowledge by using these information connections. Follow these Wikipedia links to compare and contrast the theory of connectivism versus constructivism.
Connectivism is also very relevant to our students today due to the inherent diversity in the available sources of information, and the community of opinions that are used to synthesize knowledge. Our current students have a much broader base of experiences and knowledge than we did at their age, leading to great diversity of learning styles and educational needs. Differentiation, the practice of providing multiple modes or channels of learning through which students can accomplish the same learning goal, is well supported by connectivism and the rich diversity of multimedia content available on the web. There are, so to speak, many paths to enlightenment.
An interesting blog by George Siemens about connectivism, and his definition of connectivism, really expands upon the notion that for today's students, it is all about currency of information. Why would you want to memorize a fact that will change tomorrow? Thanks to technology, the sum of mankind's knowledge is increasing at such a rate that the learning styles of the past, based on accumulating knowledge internally, are made obsolete. No one person could ever absorb a fraction of our current knowledge, so we must focus on teaching our students how to connect or network to new information and content, synthesize knowledge using this information as needed, and then use this newly-formed knowledge as a springboard to network to even more current information.
When we as educators are expected to prepare students for an unknown future, or a job that does not exist today, teaching them the learning skills required to synthesize new knowledge based on a connectivist approach is the only learning model that fully meets the needs of our diverse students in this ever-changing world.
Week 4 Discussion Elaboration
For those unable to access the Lamar EDLD 5364 Discussion Board, here is my post for Week 4:
My quote regarding a key concept to address when designing effective student-centered learning experiences with technology comes from Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age, Chapter 7, The Value of UDL in Assessment: "Embedded, flexible, ongoing assessments have the potential to resolve many of the problems with standardized, paper-and-pencil tests, particularly as tools for guiding teaching. It is true that standardized tests can yield valuable information, especially if one is evaluating trends and information about groups, but as accurate assessments of individual students' skills, knowledge, and learning, these assessment tools are severely flawed."
As we incorporate more and more technology into the curriculum, we must also ensure the continuum between the written, taught and tested curriculum is maintained. We are learning how to use multiple forms of media and materials to address the unique learning styles and learning networks of our students, and we must also put equal effort into reforming our assessment practices. It is critical we as leaders take an active role in transforming in-classroom assessment, mentoring our peers on the necessity of integrated, ongoing formative and summative assessments in a variety of styles and media so that we are truly assessing student knowledge of course materials and concepts. There are far too many examples of our assessments measuring test-taking skills; in my own district, it was once determined that poor performance on benchmarks at an elementary was caused by poor bubbling skills on Scantron forms. This is a prime example of a well-intentioned but inappropriate use of educational technology, applying it in a way that without proper instruction and accommodation will confound the measurement of student learning.
This topic is especially near and dear to my heart as a district administrator; with so much emphasis put on accountability and student performance, we must change the way students are being assessed so that we are truly gauging their knowledge of the subject matter and not their test taking skills (or lack thereof). However, there are still some that are concerned we are "coddling" our students by being too accommodating; they would argue that the workplace is not going to accommodate you, life is tough, and school must prepare students for the workplace by being more rigid and stringent, particularly in assessment.
I contend that just as we use accommodations in special education with the goal being to improve student learning skills to the point they can be exited from the program, and learn and function independently, our goal should be to teach and assess students in such a manner that we prepare them to become independent learners in whatever means suits their unique learning styles. In a typical job there is little "assessment" as such; other than completing assigned tasks, the boss almost never tells you how to perform a task; that is up to you. This is in contrast to most current classrooms, where we tell students how to learn and assess them all in the same manner just as we did in the industrial age when we needed more "drones" and fewer independent thinkers.
In our jobs, we are very goal and task oriented, and how well we perform our tasks is our assessment; we do not take a separate test at the end of each assignment. Classroom assessment must be more closely adapted to this real-world model. One method to accomplish this is by incorporating assessment into the performance of the learning tasks, such as building portfolios of student work, or libraries of appropriate links and social bookmarks in a wiki demonstrating understanding of a subject and the ability to network in new resources during their creation of knowledge. An added benefit of this approach is that it better meets the needs of students with various learning styles and diverse backgrounds as the students are being assessed in an ongoing format including multiple types of assessment such as demonstration of skills, dialoging, and presentation of work.
Harvard University has excellent web resources regarding the Teaching for Understanding Framework. Their web page answering the question What is Ongoing Assessment? contains some very relevant real-world examples of this process, examples based in the world of work as I alluded to above. Also refer to the Key Features of Ongoing Assessment for more guidance you can use as a foundation for rubrics including ongoing instruction in your classroom. I particularly like their Teaching with Ongoing Assessment page, which reminds us that assessment is not just performed to gauge student learning, but also as feedback to examine and reshape our curriculum and pedagogy.
Other great resources on changing classroom instruction and assessment to be more learner-centered can be found on the CAST (Center for Applied Special Technology) UDL (Universal Design for Learning) website, and of particular interest to the topic of ongoing, embedded assessment is their information on The Value of UDL in Assessment.
Ultimately, the biggest lesson I learned this week in my Teaching with Technology class is that we must always remember, as one of my fellow students posted on our discussion board, that assessment must be used to evaluate ourselves as teachers, and our teaching methods, just as much as it is used to evaluate student learning. By changing the way we assess our students so that we are truly assessing their knowledge and skills and not just their test-taking ability, we gain a better understanding of how to improve them and how to improve ourselves as well. We must remember that we are all learners, we must learn with our students, and we can build relationships by sharing with them the excitement of creating new knowledge that is self-assessing as the lessons progress.
Week 5 Discussion Elaboration
For those unable to access the Lamar EDLD 5364 Discussion Board, here is my post for Week 5:
My final quote is from Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools; "If educators work together to plan their instruction and simultaneously plan ways to evaluate throughout the unit, they will develop a wide variety of interesting models." This hit home because one of the less-appropriate uses of classroom technology has traditionally been the use of technology primarily as an "automated testing system" in which teachers reduce everything to "bubble sheets" and let the Scantron do the work. Even teachers who have spent lots of time designing differentiated instruction practices, and who are really concerned about reaching every student in the manner that suits their learning style, often see assessment as a separate component, somewhat out of their control, and very traditional and linear.
As technology leaders, we must work to change our teacher's views of what constitutes assessment; although there will always be state-required assessments that may be beyond our control, the day-to-day assessments and benchmarks must be planned and incorporated as a natural part of the learning process. We must get teams of teachers to design their assessment as an integral and ongoing process that presents a variety of formats, includes performance and evaluates effort, and helps the student make a clear link between the effort they have put into a project and the grade they receive. If we can get enough ongoing, integral assessment tied directly to the curriculum objectives and embedded natively into the teaching process, and if we quit thinking about assessment as a separate, ritualistic process, we will better prepare our students for a task-performance oriented world while at the same time preparing them with a foundation of the knowledge and skills they need to master our state assessments.
As an administrator, assessment is particularly important to me, as we need to make data-driven decisions, and the student performance data is ultimately only as good as the testing process used to gather that information. Give a student a test that accommodates their learning style, allows them to demonstrate their knowledge of content, and lets them connect their effort to the outcome, and you will get very accurate data on how well students are learning. Give students a Scantron, bubble-in only test with no options or accommodations and you will get data reflecting their bubbling skills and reading/comprehension abilities as much as it reflects knowledge of the subject matter.
For this reason, it is critical to build in ongoing assessment in a variety of formats ranging from self-assessment documents to portfolios of work, online surveys, observations of performance and brainstorming sessions. It is also critical that students receive regular and ongoing feedback from these varied forms of assessment all along the way so as to make connections between the effort they expend and their grade, and to know where they stand academically each step of the way allowing them to make intuitive mid-course corrections themselves without excessive intervention.
As one of my classmates observed in the discussion this week, you can really see from the expression on your student's faces whether they are frustrated or perplexed by the assessment tool, as they often appear to be when writing essays or research papers, or when they are at ease and understand their performance and the expectations of an assignment such as when working on wikis or blogs. The nature of an essay or research paper separates performance from evaluation, and provides few opportunities to determine whether the effort is producing the desired outcome; all we have really done is replace a typewriter with presentation or word processing software.
In order to address this issue in my District, we are transitioning to the use of wikis and blogs, and our English department is excited about using Google Docs, concentrating on building in regular feedback loops and progress points much as we have used in our Teaching with Technology class. It does take more involvement and follow-up from the teachers, but they are anxious to do whatever it takes to improve student performance by letting the students work in their native technologies. I do fear there will be some teachers who never fully grasp the need for this change, but we must do all we can to help our peers move forward, and in the end, make the difficult but sometimes necessary staffing decisions if they refuse to accept change and grow professionally. Student outcomes must drive everything we do, and we must be ready to make the hard decisions for the good of our students.
A great site for learning more about non-traditional assessments and educational technology, particularly in the area of Foreign Languages but applicable to all subjects, is the site of teacher Audrey N. Hannaford's Assessment Portfolio detailing various types of assessment. Ms. Hannaford also has great information on her Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium page.
As a fitting closing for this section of my wiki, I will borrow a great quote from Ms. Hannaford's main page that really sums up the purpose of our Teaching with Technology class, as well as the reason most of us are in the teaching profession to begin with:
"As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it."
- Antoine de St-Exupéry